State retirees return to work, get pay and pension

By Ken Dixon, STAFF WRITER

Published 2:42 am, Thursday, September 24, 2009

HARTFORD -- Back in February, as the General Assembly grappled with a growing multi-billion-dollar deficit, lawmakers and Gov. M. Jodi Rell agreed on a retirement-incentive program that would supposedly save $22 million.

About 3,600 of the 54,000 governmental employees eventually took the deal, which offered an additional three years of service credit toward retirement for those willing to reduce the Connecticut workforce or make way for younger, lower-paid employees.

But the actual savings have been put into doubt this month, as hundreds of newly mothballed workers returned to the state payroll as "temporary" workers getting paid 75 percent of their former salaries, on top of their pensions and medical benefits.

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Between 270 and 500 of these "retired" workers have come back to the state for up to 120 days, according to Rell administration officials and September payroll documents reviewed Tuesday by Hearst's Connecticut Newspapers.

Deputy State Treasurer Howard G. Rifkin, with 33 years in state government, is back making $3,772.61 every two weeks, according to the most-recent payroll figures released by Comptroller Nancy S. Wyman.